Wishy-Washy on Waterboarding

On Wednesday, I was invited to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst to
defend the war on terror. The university is such a hotbed of liberalism,
arguably the most PC university in the country (take that, University of
Wisconsin!), that my police security detail included two armed bodyguards.
Such is the confidence in free speech on campuses today.

A number of left-wing bloggers had attempted to foment an incident. They
failed on that front. But they did fill the room with students not easily
inclined to agree with conservative arguments.

In an attempt to make it a constructive evening, I tried to appeal to them
on their terms, rather than my own.

Fortunately, the news provided ample ammunition. Earlier this week, we
learned that congressional leadership, Republicans and Democrats alike, had
been informed in 2002 that the CIA had harshly interrogated high-value
al-Qaida operatives, using, among other methods, waterboarding. One of the
Democrats in the room: Nancy Pelosi, the current speaker of the House.

This is, shall we say, intriguing, since Pelosi and her party have been
until recently reaching new heights of sanctimony on the issue of torture
and waterboarding.

There "was no objecting, no hand-wringing," an official who was there told
the Washington Post. "The attitude was, 'We don't care what you do to those
guys as long as you get the information you need to protect the American
people.'" Not only did Pelosi not offer a peep of protest, the Washington
Post reports that at least two lawmakers (out of only a few present) pressed
the administration about whether the methods were "tough enough" to get the
job done.

Either Pelosi asked the question herself, or she sat quietly while one of
her colleagues inquired whether the screws were being turned tightly enough.

Either way, her defenders say we need to look at the context. This was just
after 9/11, and Pelosi was as angry about the attack and as eager to prevent
another one as anyone.

Time magazine's liberal columnist Joe Klein writes: "There was fear that we
would be attacked again by terrorists, and on a regular basis. Few were
thinking clearly about the nature of the threat and how to deal with it."
So, what's the big deal?

Well, it's a big deal for a lot of reasons. But the one that left-wingers
should take to heart is that you can't rely on your leaders and champions
when the buildings collapse, the bombs explode or the planes fall from the
sky.

If it's OK for liberal Democrats to condone what they consider to be torture
when they're scared and angry, then the lesson is that the only way you can
count on Democrats not to be scared and angry is to prevent future 9/11s.

Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online,and the author of the book The Tyranny of Clichés. You can reach him via Twitter @JonahNRO.
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